I suppose what Nancy and I did down there could be called a “circle jerk.” I had dared her to masturbate against one arm of my favorite sofa while I did the same thing straddling the opposite side. I wasn’t sure she’d do it, but she accepted my challenge. We had witnessed each other climaxing as we rubbed our genitals on the rough cloth of the couch.

Just after we finished, we sat there together, holding each other and kissing. Our little fridge down there was stocked with beverages, and I took out bottles of beer that our guy friend Richie had purchased for us. I had offered one of the bottles to Nancy and I was drinking another myself.

I was still fully dressed except that my green bakery skirt was up around my waist; my blue panties were on the floor. Nancy had to remove her jeans in order to do the couch-arm jerk-off that she had accomplished. Thus she was bottomless except for her sandals.

She had a surprising question for me, which I guess was inspired by the beer we were having. “If you don’t mind me asking, ah – well how do you go to the bathroom down here?”

That was actually worth asking. “Well, we have a bucket here. You have to take it out to the laundry sink down the hall. Just use the tub on the left so we can use the other one for something else.” She seemed a bit perturbed. “Don’t worry, you’ll probably never run into anybody when you do that. So yeah, it’s not exactly glamorous in here.”

She looked around the room, which had those rough plastered walls that 1920s basements have. As usual, it had shiny gray paint for the first three feet, as did the floor.

She then said, “I suddenly am not sure what to say to you. I mean, I hardly know you.”

It struck me that hip girls were never supposed to be at a loss for words, yet I detected a shyness that I supposed she usually hid from her classmates. Meanwhile, I was feeling uncharacteristically relaxed and confident. I bet this thing we’ve got going is not like the beginning of the kind of friendships or even love affairs she is used to. Having gone that far in a single afternoon, I figured I might as well continue to be bold.

“All right, I don’t think you’ll mind me asking this. Have you ever masturbated with another girl before?”

I heard her nervous, high-pitched laugh again. “No, never. Ah, have you?”

Don’t sound boastful, Chloe, but let’s face it, you’re not the sweet, innocent girl everyone used to think you were. “Yes I have, with Gina and Jenny obviously. Right in this room.”

“Oh, is that what you meant by a sisterhood?”

I had thought Gina would fill her in on the details, but I decided that I could do that just as well as she could. I had some momentum going there. “That’s part of it, for sure, but there’s more. I guess we like to push boundaries.” I decided to explain further. “We started off with circle jerks with each other. Then we figured . . .” Figured what? “That we should also, you know, do it to each other.”

“Only guys have circle jerks.”

“You’d be surprised at what women are capable of doing.” Man, am I really going to say this? “Nancy, have you ever had sex with another girl?”

That got to her, but she was pretty sharp. “You’ve hinted at that earlier, although you didn’t specify that it was your friends.”

Wow, I’d become quite indiscreet by that point in my life. I remembered telling her that I liked the taste of pussy. “I did, didn’t I? You also said that your boyfriend doesn’t like to go down on you.”

She blushed noticeably. Me, good but inconsequential Chloe, had embarrassed one of the “important” girls at Evander High.  But I was feeling my power, both social and sexual. I continued, “John is his name; Gina told me. But I bet he thinks his dick tastes just fine, especially in your mouth.”

That was purely a guess, but I had hit upon something that bothered her a lot. She sounded aggrieved.

“You’re absolutely right about him. It’s like you’ve read my mind. But I have to ask: This sisterhood of yours; so you are lesbians you mean?” At that point she looked embarrassed again.

I had thought that Gina would be the one to explain all of these complicated arrangements, but the task was falling to me. “Not really. I mean we date guys, casually, but we then turn to each other for . . .” How should I put this? “Call it lovemaking. I guess that sounds a bit strange.”

“No, it makes sense, now that I think about it. Anyway, I admit, I’m still a virgin.”

“Well, so are we, technically. But as Gina says, ‘it depends on how you look at it.’ ”

She found that funny. I was about to make my move on her. Gina had been giving me some of Blake’s poems to read. He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence. Being blunt seemed to be working quite well for me.

“Nancy, you’re obviously are much like we are, I mean sexually. I could deflower you right now if you wish.” I had never been fond of the term deflower, but it was the best I could think of.

“Won’t you be betraying your friends by doing that?”

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained. I could be dishonest as well as blunt. “I’ll tell them about our couch antics if you don’t mind, but I won’t tell them about the next step.” It was a big secret to hide, but I accepted that. “Nancy, what goes on between you and John is your business. But I’m sure I could give you an intense orgasm right now, right here.”

There was another side to me beyond the good girl who went to Mass to please her parents, who went to a private academy downtown, who wore a green uniform at a bakery. I was going to show that side to Nancy. She hesitated but I knew I had already seduced her.

“As I said, I hardly know you.”

I replied, “That doesn’t matter. You are seeing who I really am now.” I took her face in my hands and I kissed her again. She put her arms around me and kissed back.

After that, I knew what to do. I had her take her blouse off and then I unbuckled her bra. “Should I take my sandals off too?”

“No, I like them. Keep them on,”

I ran my hands along her bare skin. “You have nice tan lines, although your two-piece was a bit skimpy.”

“How about you? What kind of suit do you have?”

“A two-piece, but it’s more ample. Here, I’ll show you.”

I removed my uniform and bra, but I kept my sneakers and black knee socks on. You seem to be developing more clothing fetishes, but that is hardly surprising. The effects of the summer were visible on my skin.

Nancy ran her finger along my fan lines. “You have such a delicate body, Chloe.”

I noted the contrast to Nancy’s rangy frame. “At least I’ve a got a few curves in my behind, or I’d be completely flat.”  Then I put my hand out and rubbed her nipples. “Does this John guy – does he know about breast foreplay?”

“I doubt that he has the slightest idea.”

“That boy needs a good ass spanking.” Oops, I should be careful about that topic. “After that, someone should show him how to please a woman.”

“Who’s going to do that?”

“Well, you are, Nancy, assuming you are still interested in him. We’ll show you everything you need to know.” 

And then I did demonstrate what I knew. I took my time fondling her body, kissing her, and putting my limbs around her. When the time was right, I put my fingers into her thick dark pubic hair and I stroked her slit. She was very wet down there and she moaned as I rubbed her.

“So you do like that.” Something occurred to me that I hadn’t inquired about. “You have masturbated before, I assume?”

“Of course I have.”

“Sorry. I thought I was doing too much of it on myself. Then I met Gina and Jenny and we came down here to demonstrate our techniques to each other. And from that – one thing led to another and we decided to, ah . . .”

Something stopped me from completing the sentence, but Nancy could do it for me. “Use your abilities on each other.”

“Okay, that’s a perfect way to put it.”

“So what do . . .” She stopped for a moment. “I mean, what do bisexual ladies do to each other?”

“That’s obvious, the two of us have been talking about it. We started with finger-fucking, then we went down on each other’s pussies.”  Actually, soon Gina would show us something more that I didn’t yet know about. Anyway, it seemed like a good time to give my trainee a first-hand demonstration.

“Here, get into position. I’ll show you a good way to do it.”

That “good way,” as I had discovered in previous sessions, was to have my partner sit on the sofa with her back against the cushion and her legs spread. My place was to kneel on the floor in front of her.

I asked her, “Are you okay so far?”

“I’m doing fine.” It was a big step for her too, I knew.

As I knelt there, I licked her up and down over her slit, then I gently moved her lips apart and licked deeper.

“Oh my God, that feels great.” By that time, my tongue was probing upwards against her clitoris.

I felt like asking her if John had ever gone that far, but it seemed better not to ask. Maybe he had tasted an earlier girlfriend and that’s how he had developed his opinions about female anatomy. I would let Nancy tell me if she ever wished to.

It was easy to get her to climax; I knew what I was doing. My partner moaned and rocked on the cushion. At her peak, she grabbed my head and pushed my face in as close as it would go. I heard something like, “Chloe, that is just so . . .” and then she yelled something beyond speech.

If one can get a chick to make that much noise, one has definitely done everything right.

As she rested against the back cushion, I got up with her and began kissing her again. For a moment I stopped and said, “You can taste yourself on me now.”

“I do know what I taste like.” I assumed it was after sticking her fingers into herself but I didn’t ask.

Instead, I said, “Yes, but never on someone else’s mouth before. John doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

She giggled at that, and we sat there quietly. After a couple of minutes, I said, “I think you know it’s my turn now.”

“But I’ve never done that before.”

“It’s basically instinctual, I guess, and you saw and felt what I just did.”

I sat back on the sofa with my legs apart, and she knelt in front of me as I did with her. She still looked nervous, so I encouraged her. I reached down and opened my lips halfway.

“You see how wet I still am? We gals don’t need to recharge, which is one reason I think guys are suspicious of us.” I used the voice of the stereotypical “mook.” “ ‘Girls don’t feel anything down there.’ Yeah, guys, that’s because you don’t know what you’re doing!”

“You’re still turned on by your couch rubbing?”

“That and going down on you inspired me too.”

Nancy put her mouth on me and began probing my body with her tongue. She started at the top where my clitoris was. I moaned and moved my bottom on the cushion as she had done. As I ran my hands through her hair, I had other suggestions for her. “That’s so nice, but also lick the sides. There are a bunch of hidden sexual organs just under the skin.”

I had looked at an anatomy textbook at my school library, and I was astonished to find out about all the sensitive but unseen tissues that females have down there. That information guided me during masturbation and sex with my girlfriends. Maybe someday it would be a boyfriend, but there was no rush on that.

When I came, it was intense as it usually was. I leaned forward and gripped Nancy’s shoulders to pull her in. My legs opened wide and then I clamped them around her head. During that, I made even more noise than Nancy had.

******

A little later we sitting on the couch, drinking sodas and smooching a bit. I had to get some idea of how she felt about what had happened between us. “Look, we don’t have to tell anybody about this.”

Her answer surprised me. “You mean your two friends. Tell them about us on the couch arms, but not what happened between us.”

That was puzzling, but then I guessed the reason. She wanted to present herself as uninhibited but not too much so. It was a new version of an old dilemma that women had always faced. But I would oblige her wishes.

“Sure, I can do that. I won’t gossip about it.” I wondered if she would do the same for me if the situation was reversed. Oh well, life gets complicated at times as you already know. “We should have that sit down with Gina soon.”

She was distracted. “I just realized our faces are covered with . . .”

“Our natural perfumes? We’ve got soap and towels here for just such an occasion. Use the laundry sink or whatever it is down the hall, the right side of course.” I continued, “By the way, I’m going to put my panties in my bag. It feels wonderful to walk around with one’s crotch bare under the dress.”

“But I have jeans today.”

“For future reference, then.”

*****

At a pizzeria, we sat at a booth with our slices and sodas and looked around. I recognized another of my neighbors, Mrs. Kerner. She waved at me. As usual, I imagined what older people would say or think. Why can’t all girls be as nice and well-behaved as Chloe?

If they only knew I was sitting there without any drawers. And I was talking to a girl I had sex with on the first date. Nancy was perhaps aware of what I was going through my mind because she said, “I have never done anything like this before. What are we to each other now?”

I had a hard time responding to that. “We’re friends, I guess?” It was difficult to define what we were now. Just lovers, perhaps?

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Sort of. I’ve been dating this guy from my school downtown. But he lives in this neighborhood.”

“What do you do with him?”

I knew she wasn’t referring to which movies we saw. “We make out sometimes in the park. Nothing too unusual.” Unlike what I do with my girlfriends.

Surprisingly, Nancy didn’t mention bringing him down to the basement. But it popped into my mind anyway. I had never said anything about the place to Chris, but maybe it was time to do that.

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.

Nancy asked, “How is he going to react to me? With jealousy or fascination or, I don’t know?”

“I’ll handle that. He doesn’t have to know everything about what I do with my friends.”

*******

The very next day, a Thursday, I ended my shift at the bakery and immediately walked up the hill to the luncheonette where Gina worked behind the counter. She was the only staff member there at that moment, and there was just one customer sitting in a booth.

As soon as I entered the store, she said, “Oh, you’re still in your work uniform.” I even had my round green hat on; I had forgotten to take it off.

“There’s something really important I’ve got to tell you about.”

“Then sit down and let soda jerk Gina get you something. An egg cream, how about one of those?”

“That would be great.” I perched on a stool facing the counter as she prepared one for me.

“You have to pay for this, as usual.” She could get free stuff from my bakery but I had to pay for anything from her store. The owners of the two places had different policies on giving out samples.

“Sure, I know all about that.” I felt self-conscious about wearing that somewhat silly hat, so I took it off and put it in my bag. Meanwhile, I was eager to tell Gina my tale. When she had my beverage ready, I got right into it. “Nancy came to see me at the bakery yesterday, I mean you told her where I worked.”

“Okay, so what did she say?”

“She wanted to meet me for a conversation after work, so I invited her over to the foundations in the park. I still had my uniform on, like today. Frankly, at first, I wasn’t that happy with the whole thing and I hoped it would be like a formality, I’d say. And I didn’t know you told her about our basement hideaway, I mean Club Mangano.”

That caught Gina’s attention and she looked worried. “Maybe I went too far and I shouldn’t have done that.” I thought I knew why she had; she wanted to impress one of the important girls at her school who had finally noticed her. Also, I had perceived that she had an infatuation, maybe even a crush, on her popular classmate. She continued, “I assumed she would figure that we just went there to hang out, you know, have some privacy away from adults.”

I protested, “We are adults!” but that wasn’t relevant, or even entirely accurate. As I had promised Nancy, I described events up to and including the sofa whack-off, but not the intimate relations I had next with her.

There I was already lying about things after only three days of this new reality. Gina was impressed anyway. “Jesus, Chloe, that was pretty wild. But you’ve been so different recently. I never expected all of that to happen.”

“Well, you kind of started it. I told her that we should meet up with you, sort of discuss a few things. I even made up a name for our group, the Secret Society of the Bronx River Sisterhood.”

“That’s a little more formal than I had pictured it. I mean, she doesn’t have to be vetted to hang around with us.”

“Maybe we should do it anyway. Since last March, it’s just been the three of us. So we could have lunch with her, just talk about a few things.”

“Okay, I’ll call you to arrange it. Just try to reassure her, make sure she’s comfortable with all of it.”

Jenny and I had picked up more literary suggestions from our friend, and I remembered Sir Walter Scott. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!

But I justified it to myself by thinking that I was only protecting someone’s privacy. Likely it was myself that I was trying to protect.

****** 

Two days later, the four of us were in a local diner. Gina and I sat on one side, and Jenny and Nancy faced us. As Gina had predicted, our new companion seemed a bit nervous.

Our de facto leader explained, “So you’ve learned quite a bit from Chloe here. Frankly, I didn’t guess that she’d take matters into her own hands. Well, maybe that’s the wrong way to phrase it.”

Nancy, fortunately, smiled at that. Gina continued, “We’ve been having some fun together this summer, going on excursions for example. Recently this guy from my building gave us a ride up to Bear Mountain.”

“Is he your boyfriend or something?”

Now it was Gina’s turn to do some prevarications. “No, he goes to Lehman College, but he does little favors for us. Like he buys the beer because we are underage. I suppose he could get us into an R-rated movie if we asked him.”

She said nothing about the porn magazines he had bought, the marijuana, or the kinky activities that he had done with us in the basement. There was probably more I didn’t know about yet. I wondered if Nancy would say, So what is he doing hanging out with a bunch of high school girls? Maybe she did think that, but she didn’t mention it.

Gina said, “Hey guys, I found out that Richie has a girlfriend over at Lehman. Her name is Barbara.”

Perhaps she was redirecting any doubts about him. I asked, “Does she live around here?”

“No, over by Westchester Square.”

“Are we ever going to meet her?”

Gina must have thought that through. “Well, I haven’t asked for that, and he hasn’t offered it yet.”

I could suddenly grasp the unspoken truth about Richie. It was likely that his girlfriend didn’t approve of his taste for porn or BDSM activities. But he had convinced his young neighbor to fill in his secret desires. That was probably the reason he was doing favors for us in return, like buying substances that we couldn’t get ourselves.

I wonder what he is going to ask for next?

Gina quickly moved on beyond Barbara. “So Nancy, we’ve sort of been having our own Sweet Sixteen party all summer. You can participate in my next idea too.”

We were all going to have dinner together, and the theme was Labor Day and the end of wearing white clothes until the next summer. Gina had an elaborate explanation about that now mostly gone custom.

Nancy said, “I don’t think I have that many white items.”

Gina told her. “That doesn’t matter; just dress up for the occasion. Wear whatever you think a lady should have for warm weather, some kind of skirt or dress. But I do have white cotton gloves that you all can borrow. Gloves have gone out of fashion, but I think it will be fun to have them during this.”

I added, “And white lingerie is great too.”

Nancy didn’t know what I was talking about, so Gina explained it to her. “She means garters and stocking straps, among other things. Chloe and Jenny have developed quite an interest in cute underthings.”

“You can still get those?”

Jenny was inspired. “You sure can! Then you can wear nice panties on top of them. It feels so sexy but no one else can tell what you’ve got on under your skirt.”

Gina said, “She’s right. And a petticoat can be good too. It’s like being Emily Dickinson on the outside and Bettie Page underneath.”

I laughed at that, but Nancy was trying to process it. I didn’t add that it was arousing to not wear underpants, but just be bare and let the air rise up around one’s hips and crotch.   

She did say, “You girls seem pretty wild.”

Gina scoffed, “We’re not so bad. We go to school, we have jobs, we need to let off some tension at times.

She was only revealing part of the story. Nancy, for example, knew about our Sapphic activities, but that was supposed to remain a secret between the two of us.

*****

On Saturday of Labor Day Weekend, we had dinner at the Louis Restaurant on White Plains Road. That was where Michael’s Godfather shootout had been filmed a couple of years earlier. Of course, none of us had seen the movie because we had been too young to attend a theater.

When we walked in, a few people glanced at us because we were all wearing white gloves which had become rare by then. Gina’s pair went up to her elbows. Otherwise, we looked like young women dressed up a bit for a warm-weather outing.

I had a sleeveless blue sundress, but underneath my stockings were held up by my favorite white garter and straps. Another item I loved, a pair of sheer white panties, was on top of that. As I knew would happen, it felt incredibly sexy to move through the place with those items under my clothes.

Jenny was the only one with a hat, the straw one had gotten earlier in the season. We winked at each other before we sat down.

Gina asked the waiter to give us a table next to the south wall, the one with a single window in it. I already knew what I wanted to order, so I looked around. I had seen one photo of the restaurant in a magazine article about the movie, so the place looked familiar to me. Its interior wasn’t modern, but I couldn’t tell if it had the same appearance in 1945.

The waiter surprised us by bringing us a big bottle of wine. He was a young guy, in his early twenties, and he asked no questions about our ages. He must have been doing it to impress us, a group of well-dressed young women.

“I assume you girls would like some of our house red?”

As he poured for us, Gina of course had to flirt with him. “This is really nice of you. How long have you been working here?”

“Not long, since the beginning of July.”

“Well, my name is Gina.” She didn’t introduce the rest of us. “It’s great to meet you.”

“I’m Anthony, or just Tony is fine.”

“Then you can just call me Cleopatra!”

We all laughed at that, but secretly I was bugged. Gina wasn’t beautiful, but she could project her sexuality to someone who interested her in that way. I could see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice; I was envious of the way she could easily banter with a guy she had just met. And besides, to pick a nit, the ancient Roman was Antony, not Anthony.

I decided to impose myself into the conversation. “Ah, Tony, do you live around here?”

He mentioned a street a few blocks south of my building. “I know where that is.” But I didn’t have a follow-up. I lacked the ability to flirt for its own sake.

Tony knew enough not to press the issue, and he said he’d come back when we had made up our minds. I already knew that I wanted to try the eggplant parmigiana.

A little later, after our menus had been collected, Gina just had to razz me a bit. “So Chloe, you obviously think Tony is cute.”

I was a bit annoyed. “Well, so do you.” You can’t talk to a guy without your panties getting damp.

But my female horniness was getting to me too. Until I met my friends, I had wondered if I was perhaps oversexed. That familiar desire to masturbate overcame me, and I squirmed in my seat. Guys know what that feeling is like, but we females certainly do too! A delicious fantasy came to me of showing my garter and see-through panties to Tony. The rear view would be especially enticing. That would sure make him forget Gina in a hurry!

Gina held court at our table, and near the end of dinner she said to Nancy, “Part of our Sweet Sixteen celebrations has been to flash passing trains at the station over there.”

Nancy didn’t know what she meant, so Gina explained how we would go there to present our exposed behinds and undersides as a train went by.

“What do you get out of that?”

“It’s just very exciting. I guess I have an exhibitionist streak in me.”

“Aren’t you afraid of getting caught?”

“We haven’t been yet, and I make sure the timing is good.”

She reached into her purse and pulled out complete timetables for both the Harlem and New Haven divisions. “I’ve been checking these, and in less than an hour a northbound Harlem train will stop on the other side. Then, about five, make it six, minutes later a southbound New Haven train should pass through without stopping. That is the one we will hit.”

Nancy looked uneasy. “Is this another one of those dares?”

“It sure is, honey.” She got a bit rude. “You talk a good game at school. Let’s see if you can handle a simple stunt like this.”

Presenting dares seemed like a very male thing to do, but I could see that Nancy felt the social pressure to accept the challenge. Gina said, “Have a little more wine; get your courage up.”

As we finished and paid up, Gina said to the waiter, “So Tony, where was the Godfather scene filmed?

"I wasn’t here then, but I’ve seen the movie. It was right there, in the middle of the room.”

“This is really a nice place. I’m sure I’ll be back. And maybe I’ll see you around too, you know what I mean.”

I thought that she would offer her phone number to him, but she knew how to string a guy along.  She did ask, “So what days are you here?”

“Usually I work weekends.” Maybe he had another job or went to school during the week.

“If you have the chance, I work at Bert’s Luncheonette up the hill. Stop by and have an egg cream or something.”

I couldn’t help but admire how she operated. She was basically asking for a date without committing him to a certain day or time.

On the way out, I waved to him. Yeah, Tony, Gina is a very bad girl but I can be even worse!

*****

A little later we were at the top of the steps to the southbound platform. A guy was waiting at the bottom for a train. Gina scanned the area. “We’ll go beyond the end of the platform and just around that curve. It bends to the right, so that guy won’t be able to see us. Don’t rush; just walk normally.”

Nancy looked nervous, so I said, “Come on, everything is going to be fine.” We went past the guy at the base of the steps who took no mind of us. Then we went along the platform and off the end into a weedy area. Gina said, “I hope these things are running on time today.”

As “advertised,” the northbound train stopped at the other platform, which was offset so it wasn’t directly opposite us. Jenny was standing right at the bend so she could look north for our train.

It was on time, and she said, “Okay, here it comes. It’s going to be right here on this track.”

Gina looked at her watch to check. “About thirty seconds, I think.”

Nancy appeared to be having an anxiety attack. “Oh God, how do I do this?”

Gina always “led from the front,” or maybe I should say on that day, from the rear. “Baby, it’s simple. Drop your drawers to your ankles, hike up your skirt, and bend over.”

While grasping the trunk of a young tree, my curiosity got to me. Nancy was just to my right and I commented, “Nice panties.” They were pink with white dots. She replied, “Nice garter.” I kept looking over my shoulder, and then our train passed through. It was very close and loud, but I still gazed at it. It was a long train with a locomotive and more than a dozen cars.

In one of them, a young guy was looking out the open window of a vestibule. But he went by before I could tell if noticed us. Gina saw him too, and she yelled, “Hey, honey, you want to make it with me?” In any case, it would be impossible for him to hear her.

I also felt that warm summer air hitting my body, especially my pussy, and that was very good indeed. Perhaps it was that sensation that I enjoyed the most out of those pranks.

At the end, Gina said, “All right, let’s go, but don’t panic. Take it easy walking back. Also, being naughty girls, we should stow our panties in our purses.”

We all did that, except Nancy, who just stood there with her pink drawers down around her ankles. “Why should we do that?

“Because, honey, it feels great. Give it a try; you'll like it.” I'm sure social pressure got to her, because she somewhat reluctantly did as she was told.

We couldn’t stifle our giggles, but the guy by the steps ignored us again. Back at street level, we all started talking at once, including me. “Man, I always get tingles when doing that. The air pushing on my body is part of it.”

Gina said, “Oh, those kinds of tingles. I get them too.” Nancy looked shocked and Gina said to her, “You did good, kid. That wasn’t so hard, was it? You are definitely a certified bad girl now.”

“I just hope Antoinette doesn’t find out about this.”

Jenny explained it for me. “She’s the cool girl all the other cool girls look up to. She’s in a couple of my classes. A tall blonde, quite good looking, and she wears just the right amount of make-up.”

Gina said, “I’m in classes with her too, and don’t worry, my lips are sealed. Whatever you do after school and who you hang out with is your business only.” Then she said, “Let’s go over to Chloe’s basement. I have a surprise for all the sisters in our Bronx River Society.”

We were all babbling as we headed over to my building. Gina mentioned the song “Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen.“ She was a bit crude about it. “It’s a bit creepy, this older guy suddenly notices that she’s nubile, and he wants a piece of her now. Consider the lyrics, ‘But since you've grown up, your future is sewn up. From now on you're gonna be mine.’ ”

Jenny said, “The age of consent is sixteen in some states.”

Gina knew her stuff. “But it’s seventeen in this state.”

I remembered that Richie was three years older than she was. Do I know everything going on between him and Gina?

Maybe I deflected the issue by asking, “Does that include girls with other girls?” That was a question I should not have brought up.

“Good question; I have no idea. I suspect the framers of that law couldn’t imagine it. Hey Nancy, if I say, ‘So how was Penn Central?,’ you’ll know what I mean, right?”

“Oh please, don’t get me into trouble.” I realized that she meant her classmates more than her teachers.

“Don’t worry, that’s why it’s a secret society. We all have discretion; we don’t gossip about these events.”

Nancy and I had that other secrets we had to keep. I had to keep it all straight. Nancy and I knew about all of us having sex with each other. But those other two didn't know that we knew, nor did they know about Nancy and me. I had to keep all of those complications straight.

#####